Jesuit Ruins Then Paraguay

It was the start of another big day, and we had somehow not found time the previous day to book our accommodation then, in the morning we definitely didn't have time before catching our bus, so we were heading towards a town with little accommodation in it without having anything booked, an approach we hadn't taken since Asia, where it rarely caused a problem, but Japan then New Zealand had made us more cautious.

First stop, though, was San Ignacio, a place famous for the Jesuit ruins there. I didn't know much about the Jesuits but there are plenty of examples of their ruined community buildings all over this part of South America, abandoned when the King of Spain expelled them, then destroyed during South American international wars. I didn't really know what to expect of the ruins either, but thought we should check them out since we were in the area.

In the town of San Ignacio it was the first time we had seen anyone who looked more than slightly native American. And the tragedy is that the South American Indians here, Guaranis I think, were probably the poorest people we had seen so far on the continent. They all seemed to be living in the streets and they looked utterly miserable. Maybe not so much has changed in Argentina since Guevara's time after all.

We were a bit unsure what to do when we arrived. I tried to tell someone that I was looking for tourist information, but I think he understood simply that I was wanted information and pointed us in the direction of the ruins, rather than somewhere we could maybe store our bags for a few hours, get a map, and maybe access the internet to book a place to stay that evening. We stood around contemplating lunch and where the entrance to the ruins might be, rather than the exit we were standing outside, when a woman came out of one restaurant, and invited us to leave our bags for no charge. I'm not sure if she was explicit or hinted that we eat at her restaurant, but we were quite happy to do so anyway.

Lots of birds around the ruins

What would Dan Brown make of these symbols?

The entrance to the ruins first takes you into a little museum which explains a bit about the Jesuits and what they were trying to achieve. They had set up these communities as a way of bringing Christianity to the natives, but rather than completely repressing their culture as had been the approach of some other missionaries, they only tried to change the parts of the culture they saw directly contradicting god's word, so that, for example, polygamy was disallowed, but they did not bother trying to teach them Spanish, as they had been told to, instead choosing themselves to learn the Guarani tongue. One of their objectives, the exhibition informed us, was to protect the natives from exploitation, and the resulting communities are considered one of the earliest examples of working Marxist communes, the information continued. In what way these communes were more Socialist than the communal societies the natives were living in before the Jesuits arrived, the exhibition did not say, but it did make me wonder whether the Jesuits were really expelled from the Americas for doctrinal reasons, rather than economic ones; I'm sure prevention of exploitation and communal living were not high up the Spanish King's list of priorities for his colonies.

Entrance to the ruins

Church entrance

Tree growing through a wall

Even here they can't resist grafitti

The ruins themselves were not very exciting; actually they were quite impressive, but any ruins on the same trip as Angkor have to be really impressive to be of much interest. They seem to be rebuilding large parts of it but haven't got very far yet.

Living quarters

The stonework has seen better days

When we finished at the ruins, we picked our bags up from the restaurant where the staff kindly told us where to wait for the bus. After half an hour of waiting, I was starting to get nervous about the possibility of our intended hotel filling up before we got there, but a bus arrived shortly after and we were in Posadas soon after, where we quickly and easily caught a bus to Encarnacion, across the border. At the Argentine border post the bus waited as almost everyone got off to get stamped out, then at the Paraguayan side the bus stopped and the driver looked at us meaningfully. We had considered not bothering with Paraguayan stamps this time, after all the hassle at Iguazu, but a few other people getting off the bus persuaded us it would be OK. As soon as we got off the bus the others all wandered off in the direction of no-mans-land, where they probably lived, but it looked like the bus was waiting, so it would be OK after all. The queue for the immigration officials wasn't very long but it wasn't moving very fast, and one of the two windows was taken up by an official having his lunch. After a couple of minutes, the bus crept forward, the driver craning to analyse the situation briefly, before putting his foot down and disappearing.

Luckily the next bus was along in only fifteen minutes but by that time I was convinced all of the rooms in Encarnacion would be gone. After longer on the bus that I expected, with no sign of any bus terminal, the bus stopped in the street, everyone else got off, and the driver asked us where we were going; el terminal I said, but he pointed backwards and said something about fifteen blocks. Surely the point of a terminal is that the bus terminates there? It looked a bit dodgy where we were so, completely against our usual policy, we took a taxi. Before we got in I had to tell the driver that we had no guaranies, but he said it didn't matter, he would take pesos, dollars, euros, anything.

written by

The Happy Couple on October 10, 2009 from San Ignacio, Argentina

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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